Trump Executive Order Reducing Childhood Vaccine Recommendations Addresses State Laws That Conflict

On August 10, 2026, President Donald Trump signed an executive order reducing the number of childhood vaccinations for all children. “Delivering Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations for Americans,” establishes federal “Gold Standard” recommendations that reduced the number of childhood vaccines, down from roughly 17–18 previously recommended by the CDC in recent years, and aims to align U.S. guidance more closely with practices in certain peer developed countries.

The Trump administration “found that the United States currently recommends more childhood vaccines than any peer nation, including more than twice as many vaccine doses as some European nations (scientific assessment).  The scientific assessment also found that, instead of implementing vaccination mandates, most peer nations maintain high childhood vaccination rates through public trust and education.  In the United States, by contrast, individual States set mandatory vaccination requirements that children must meet to attend school.”

The details of the executive order:

Of particular importance in President Trump’s order which states that the “Attorney General shall take appropriate measures to further meritorious legal actions challenging State laws that conflict with States’ constitutional and Federal statutory obligations related to parental authority, religious freedom, disability accommodations, and equal protection under the law, including, to the extent applicable under Federal law, States’ obligations to provide religious and medical exemptions from childhood and adolescent immunization requirements.”

Long before the Covid flu years, parental choice and decision making in California over childhood vaccinations was removed because of a state law passed in 2012. Assembly Bill 2109 by then-Assemblyman Richard Pan (D-Sacramento), orders that California school-aged children will not be allowed to attend public school without proof that parents have been counseled, and children vaccinated, in accordance with the vaccination schedule of the federal Center for Disease Control.

The only exception to the law was a personal belief or religious exemption – the only way Assemblyman Pan could get the bill passed.

During the Covid flu years, it became evident rather quickly that it was no longer acceptable to disagree with the left on matters of public health.

One example of conflicting California law is  SB 276 by former Sen. Richard Pan (D-Sacramento), which disallows the vaccination medical exemptions parents were receiving from family physicians, and its companion bill SB 714, which was hastily gutted and amended, and slammed through the Assembly and Senate without any policy hearings, orders the California Department of Public Health to investigate and discipline doctors who grant more than five medical exemptions in a year, in schools with immunization rates under 95 percent.

Senator Pan wanted all vaccine skepticism or dissent silenced, including having Robert F. Kennedy Jr. silenced, after Kennedy issued a warning in 2021 about the then-newly released COVID vaccine: “Avoid the the vaccine at all costs.”

Kennedy, before he was Health and Human Services Secretary, was an environmental attorney and founder of Children’s Health Defense, and was well-known in California for his opposition to legislation mandating childhood vaccination schedules. He appeared at the California State Capitol legislative committee hearings to offer his support to wary parents, and in opposition of the vaccine-mandate bills.

So naturally Sen. Pan called on Twitter and Facebook to ban Robert Kennedy Jr. from their platforms as part of a national campaign to support vaccination mandates for COVID-19.

Sen. Richard Pan, who is a pediatrician, authored several bills since 2011 incrementally requiring school-aged children in California to be vaccinated on an inflexible schedule, regardless if there are other vaccine-injured children in the family.

As Americans learned during the third and final year of Coronavirus/COVID lockdowns, treatments, mandatory masking and social-distancing in California, it was un acceptable to disagree with the left on matters of public health – even physicians were fired for questioning public health officials, as the Globe reported.

Prior to the President’s order Monday, standard was/is for children in the United States to receive 50 doses of 14 different vaccines by age six, and 69 doses of 16 vaccines by age 18.

This is the CDC’s Vaccine schedule for children under age 18:

Sen. Pan’s legislation effective in 2020 said Doctors who issue five or more exemptions will be subjected to investigation and discipline by the state.

When Sen. Pan could not silence parents and Robert Kennedy, he went after the doctors.

In 2019, the Legislature was voting on Senate Bill 276 to disallow medical exemptions for vaccines, even for families with previously vaccine-injured children.  “Senate Bill 276 would eliminate almost all vaccine medical exemptions, allegedly to crack down on fraud,” California Globe reported. “Under this bill, State bureaucrats — not physicians –would be in charge of deciding whether children may receive medical exemptions and thus whether they can attend school.”

He received plenty of pushback from colleagues, including then-Senator Jeff Stone (R-Temecula), a 30-year practicing pharmacist: “Immunizations have saved millions of lives,” Stone said. He noted as an author of Pan’s previous bill, SB 277, “we promised exemptions for children with medical issues.” Stone noted that side effects from vaccines are rare, “but when you see the injuries, they are major. One-size-fits-all doesn’t work.”

In a 2019 California Globe op ed, Attorney Mary Holland asked, “When a physician decides that a child is too medically fragile to receive a vaccine, but is not allowed to submit a medical exemption because it is not a listed CDC contraindication, and that child suffers a life-threatening reaction, such as multiple seizures or encephalitis (both listed on vaccine manufacturer inserts), is the doctor liable, or the state official, who denied the exemption?”

In the 1960’s, children received only four vaccines: Smallpox, measles, polio and mumps vaccines. Now, children receive as many as 24 shots by 2 years of age and five shots in a single visit. Most children receive 49 vaccinations by the age of six, and more than 60 vaccinations from day of birth to age 18. Newborns receive eight routine vaccinations in accordance with the Center for Disease Control’s vaccine schedule, during the first 15 months of life.

President Trump’s order ends this abhorrent treatment of America’s children.